Controversial Political Opinions

[pbrower2a]

The idea of free speech assumes that people speak responsibly. We used to have journalistic standards and we now have Alex Jones, who has been linked to appeals to get people to storm the Capitol.

Some of the obvious standards were:

1. Get two independent sources (unless official sources, as with public records such as criminal convictions and semi-public records such as death notices).
2. Do not make oneself part of the news story. The most that a journalist can be is an eyewitness, and that is as an accident.
3. Do not buy stories with "checkbook journalism'. (The National Enquirer does that by bribing stories from such people as domestic servants, delivery people, and lodging staff when such can tell a lurid story about a celebrity. If you are wise, then you don't recognize such as news).
4. Do not get involved personally in partisan politics or commercial activities that will create bias and destroy your objectivity.
5. Never fabricate or plagiarize news.
6. Avoid cranks, extremists, crooks, lunatics, idiots, cults, and quacks as sources.
7. Stay separate from the advertising department.
8. Get the story out quickly, without analysis. You are a reporter and not a preacher or philosopher.

[David Horn]

(07-14-2022, 11:46 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: I think it's more simple than that: our economic order is predicated on the idea that using money to influence politics is "free speech".

Exactly! It's got to stop, but the SCOTUS is firmly on the side of checkbook politics. That will need to change first.

[pbrower2a]

(07-12-2022, 09:48 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: A lot of Democrats and Republicans complain about people working 40 hours a week and still being given food stamps or some other form of social security.

Excluding people in sheltered workshops (you don't want them having money to be blown; you don't want them to drive cars) anyone working 40 hours a week should be making a living wage. Many are not making a living wage. This may reflect brutal costs of living in some places. The people working 40 hours or more in a fast-food place are typically being paid for 40 hours but working 60 or so as "assistant managers". Some are seasonal workers such as migrant farm workers who may work 70 hours a week in planting or harvest seasons and go without pay much of the year. 

I'd be leery of taking a job in a high-cost part of the country. Rent can eat what you earn. That has skyrocketed far more than any cost of living due to America having nearly twice the population than it had in 1970. 

    

Quote:Imo, that's...exactly how the system is supposed to work: aid for people who are willing to work for an honest day's wage and still struggle to make it. Of course, you also have the (physically or mentally) disabled and the elderly, but if a high percentage of people on welfare programs worked 30+ hours a week, that would be a sign of progress, not a bad sign. When we look both at the cost-per-recipient and behavioral incentives encouraged, it's vastly preferable to the alternative of learned helplessness, and high rates of single parent homes, crime and mental illness.

Maybe we still need some minimum amount of work to meet the basic needs of us all. If forty hours a week were deemed adequate in the 1930's and we are twice (or more) as efficient at what we do, then why are we working just as much. OK, we have more and better bling. (That may be questionable, as tabletop radios of the 1930's were fiendishly expensive by the standard of the time. I can buy a cheap cell phone that does most of what a radio did (use headphones and you can get FM radio; a camera, a calculator, and something else thrown in), or a 32" flat-screen color TV for about $100 (which is not far off from what I paid for a portable transistor radio back in the 1972 - about $25. Cars, appliances (small or large), food, and furniture seem to have inflated much the same over fifty years. 

Oh, so we have more stuff? It was certainly easy to load up on LP's at one time, 8-track tapes (arrgh!), VHS tapes,  and CD's before we got to pre-recorded movies on video disks. These are now often available cheaply at Goodwill as people divest themselves of those as they downsize their housing when they retire or go to the nursing home. Does anyone want an LP of Guy Lombardo, Lawrence Welk, or Perez Prado? Those LP's weren't cheap in their day; the people who listened to them are no longer around. 

I have done some indexing of the 1950 Census, and I have noticed that many people were then boarders. They were living in a room in someone's house, and obviously they couldn't own much. They were people making a tentative move to the Big City with the fear that they might have to return to the family farm if their job as a clerical worker failed or if they didn't make it as a retail sales clerk (one might do the job, but one rarely got paid). Many boarders effectively included live-in domestics or hired farm hands. A boarder's life had little privacy, and anything that one has that is worth stealing will be stolen. Few people now live that way anymore. If you had a record player (which wasn't cheap) or some records of Guy Lombardo, Lawrence Welk, or Perez Prado those might be stolen. 

Few people would now be boarders, although it is easy to achieve "Twelve in one room in a-may-REE-caw" due to brutal urban rents.

[Eric the Green]

(07-14-2022, 10:27 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(07-13-2022, 10:49 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: I've gone over this a few times, but trying to cast all power as either having or lacking character isn't particularly useful. I am currently poor, and have lived among several subcultures of poor people. The individuals I've seen range from
- disabled people
- rapists
- orphans
- falsely accused who never got their record cleared
- mentally retarded people
- other sex offenders (ranging from as horrific as violently molesting children to as trivial as public urination)
- veterans with PTSD
- violent psychopaths
- single mothers with children from 5 different dads
- mothers who were single because their husband died and left them supporting multiple children
- liberals who work retail
- conservatives who work retail
- farmers
- start up entrepreneurs

....as you can see, you can't lump such a varied collection of people into one set of good/bad values.

Your list is sad and yet incomplete.  Failure to flourish has far too many causes, and an inital failure can be so devasting in the long run that, regardless of who or what is at fault, it's career ending.  This is the single greatest fallacy of the neoliberal 'hard work yields great rewards' argument.  It's certainly true that it can, given a structure to support the striver or just great luck, but failure is more likely and catastrophic failure more than possible.  

Ours is a needlessly cruel system that doesn't even get optimum results.  Then again, it does reward the already rewarded and only punishes the 'least of these' -- just as it's designed to do.  In short, it's the worst of the GIGO systems acceptable in polite company.  The argument for that is always the same: we can't reward bad behavior.  If it was only that simple.

Well said. It is so sad that USA voters and pundits can't seem to get this. They can't seem to get a whole lot. They vote for "rich cocksuckers who don't give a fuck about them" as George Carlin "nicely" put it. Voters in Maine could not grasp that voting for Susan Collins would condemn us to 5 degrees of global warming that might ruin their own state. They can't grasp that voting for Susan Collins would condemn us to several more times more mass shootings and more police shootings of innocent black people. They can't grasp that voting for Susan Collins means condeming us to an undemocratic, bought-and-paid-for, gerrymandered, racist voting system. They can't grasp that voting for Susan Collins means condemning the middle class to further decline. They can't grasp that voting for Susan Collins would mean a supreme court that takes away our rights, even after Trump's nominees falsely promised to her that they would not repeal Roe v Wade, and any conscious person could have seen that they would not keep their promise. They think she is a nice moderate. But Susan Collins is no moderate in the effect of her votes in the Senate. She is a reactionary. SHAME on the horrible people of Maine for condeming us to this destroyed society and world!

[Eric the Green]

(07-15-2022, 09:56 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The idea of free speech assumes that people speak responsibly. We used to have journalistic standards and we now have Alex Jones, who has been linked to appeals to get people to storm the Capitol.

Some of the obvious standards were:

1. Get two independent sources (unless official sources, as with public records such as criminal convictions and semi-public records such as death notices).
2. Do not make oneself part of the news story. The most that a journalist can be is an eyewitness, and that is as an accident.
3. Do not buy stories with "checkbook journalism'. (The National Enquirer does that by bribing stories from such people as domestic servants, delivery people, and lodging staff when such can tell a lurid story about a celebrity. If you are wise, then you don't recognize such as news).
4. Do not get involved personally in partisan politics or commercial activities that will create bias and destroy your objectivity.
5. Never fabricate or plagiarize news.
6. Avoid cranks, extremists, crooks, lunatics, idiots, cults, and quacks as sources.
7. Stay separate from the advertising department.
8. Get the story out quickly, without analysis. You are a reporter and not a preacher or philosopher.

Here is one version of the media bias chart that shows which journalism sources adhere to these standards and which do not. 

[pbrower2a]

I didn't realize that there had been an update. This significantly includes NewsNation from WGN America as well as the usual entities. Needless to say the purest news comes from entities such as AP and Reuters which give "blitz news" -- typically breaking news and nothing else. What is so great about that is that the reporters get no chance to add any bias. What isn't so great is that one gets no connection to other data. More analysis comes from entities such as ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, and PBS news and of course entities such as the New York Times. Also noteworthy are foreign entities such as BBC and Deutsche Welle.

From the same ownership, news on the Web is generally much more reliable than the broadcast news. FoX News on the Internet, for example, is almost credible, but much less so than ABC, CBS, or NBC news

If you are getting news from anywhere but the top and middle ("Skews Left" or "Skews Right" as well as "little bias" might as well have use -- if you are going to consider the Wall Street Journal reputable, then you get to add the Guardian). I recognize that the Huffington Post is marginal, but it is not behind a paywall.

A bit lower you might use something for cultural effect. but that is it. The Hartman Report is very much on the Left -- about as much as Tucker Carlson is on the Right. In the bottom three categories you are at best wasting your time, whether one has the Daily Kos (Left), the Daily Mail (mere trash), or Breitbart (Right). The really bad stuff (The Free Thought Project is the shakiest item that isn't so clearly biased) seems sharply biased as well as suspect.
FoX "News" is the right-wing version of sugary soft drinks; people are tempted to consume a lot of it, but it isn't nourishing. At the extreme of bias and unreliability is the infamous Infowars. If you saw certain parts of the Congressional Hearings you will find that Alex Jones goaded people to participate in the goings-on at the US Capitol on 1/6/2001.

(Sure, I am biased here, but Alex Jones deserves an extended stay in a federal penitentiary for what he did. What he offers is simply harmful, close to the journalistic equivalent of dioxin, mercury and cadmium salts, tetraethyl lead, and acid mine drainage with a little cesium-137 and cobalt-60 for "good" measure..

[JasonBlack]

To all of y'all drawing this false divide between "The underdog Democrats vs the Republicans and all the corrupt corporations!"

[pbrower2a]

I'm going to step on some toes and slay some sacred cows on this post that I made elsewhere:

Quote:®eligion has never been as much a problem for liberalism as has superstition. The American Revolution, one of the first expressions of liberalism, occurred within a highly-religious, but not superstitious, milieu. Abolition of slavery, female suffrage, conservation, and the effort to get children out of the factory and into school occurred in a religious context. Indeed, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin appeals heavily to Christian sensibilities. The miners and factory workers trying to get dignity and solid pay were surely more devout in their lives than the more secular and amoral bosses and tycoons. And then we have the more recent example of the struggle for freedom for Southern blacks.

The superstitious have been a different matter. They are people behind the witch-hunts, pogroms, and riots. Religious people can accept science as the way in which God does things while adhering to rigid values on ethical pretexts. Superstitious people "don't need no stinkin' science" when they know it all. Religion has often used logic to delineate moral laws and how they apply, but the superstitious prefer magic that exempts them from ethical rules. They are the ones who sacrifice a virgin to the volcano god.

Cartoons may not be high culture, but on occasion one gets a gem. Batman explains why he wears a cape: criminals are profoundly superstitious, and his cape exploits that weakness.

Most secularists recognize that even without religion that they are still responsible for ethical behavior.

[JasonBlack]

pbrower2a
solid take.

[Eric the Green]

(07-18-2022, 04:09 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: To all of y'all drawing this false divide between "The underdog Democrats vs the Republicans and all the corrupt corporations!"

Of course employees favor Democrats. Labor and workers always have.

A lot of these are headquartered here in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, which has been a center for progressive, liberal and counter-cultural trends for decades. People who work here are not exempt from the trends. If not here, then also a few up in another liberal bastion, Seattle.

[David Horn]

(07-18-2022, 04:09 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: To all of y'all drawing this false divide between "The underdog Democrats vs the Republicans and all the corrupt corporations!"

This is employee money -- ~11Million over all -- that should go to the most pro-labor party, and is a pittance in comparison to the money donated by the principals -- mostly to the GOP.

[JasonBlack]

(07-19-2022, 12:26 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: A lot of these are headquartered here in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, which has been a center for progressive, liberal and counter-cultural trends for decades. People who work here are not exempt from the trends. If not here, then also a few up in another liberal bastion, Seattle.

They are headquartered in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area because...the founders of these companies were progressives too. I think there is a false dichotomy with regards to "caring about resources vs caring about people", when in practice it's more "people who care about controlling resources vs people who care about controlling people". Capitalists such as Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates can fall into the latter category, as can communists like Mao Zedong and Che Guevara, as can religious fundamentalists of all creeds.

A lot of rich progressives are very money motivated. Not as a means of elevating their lifestyle, but because they have a savior complex, want to paint themselves as the good guy and believe these traits give them the right to tell other people how to live their lives.

Tying all this back to my main point, many corporate officials are a lot more like politicians than businessmen, so it's not surprising that just as many (if not more) are Democrat than Republican, because political animals are at their best when power is most centralized.

[Eric the Green]

(07-19-2022, 01:56 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(07-19-2022, 12:26 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: A lot of these are headquartered here in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, which has been a center for progressive, liberal and counter-cultural trends for decades. People who work here are not exempt from the trends. If not here, then also a few up in another liberal bastion, Seattle.

They are headquartered in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area because...the founders of these companies were progressives too. I think there is a false dichotomy with regards to "caring about resources vs caring about people", when in practice it's more "people who care about controlling resources vs people who care about controlling people". Capitalists such as Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates can fall into the latter category, as can communists like Mao Zedong and Che Guevara, as can religious fundamentalists of all creeds.

A lot of rich progressives are very money motivated. Not as a means of elevating their lifestyle, but because they have a savior complex, want to paint themselves as the good guy and believe these traits give them the right to tell other people how to live their lives.

Tying all this back to my main point, many corporate officials are a lot more like politicians than businessmen, so it's not surprising that just as many (if not more) are Democrat than Republican, because political animals are at their best when power is most centralized.

You are missing the point. It is the bosses who support Republicans. Employees support Democrats.

Democrats and especially progressive ones care about people and the resources they need. Republicans care only about money. Politicians within both parties are "political animals" because that's their profession. That is neither good nor bad. It is the decisions they make that are.

Progressives are not about telling other people how to live their "lives". "Life" is not making money. The "controlling people" that Democrats do is controlling how bosses treat everyone else. Without that control, they treat them and ALL of us very badly. That is the entire point. 

Bosses cannot be trusted to do the right things, and that includes Zuckerberg and the rest of the Silicon Valley bosses. Democrats are willing to control them; Republicans want them to "be free to live their lives", which means free to exploit other people and the environment however they want at the expense of the rest of us. And to deceive us with false "freedom" slogans and appeals to fear and prejudice.

FUCK the bosses, and the politicians who do their bidding (mostly Republicans and "libertarians" and "conservatives", and sometimes phony Democrats like Manchin too). We don't need the bosses, and we don't need Republicans; they need to just go away.

[JasonBlack]

(07-19-2022, 03:45 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: You are missing the point. It is the bosses who support Republicans. Employees support Democrats.

I am not missing the point. Your point is simply incorrect. Mark Zuckerberg is a Democrat. So is Jack Dempsey, so is Jeff Bezos, so is Warren Buffet, so is Mark Cuban. Even Donald Trump and Elon Musk were Democrats until recently.

Quote:Democrats and especially progressive ones care about people and the resources they need. Republicans care only about money.

over-simplification if there ever was one

Quote:Politicians within both parties are "political animals" because that's their profession. That is neither good nor bad. It is the decisions they make that are.

We're gonna have to disagree on that. Being a party animal makes someone inherently un-trustworthy.

Quote:Progressives are not about telling other people how to live their "lives". "Life" is not making money. The "controlling people" that Democrats do is controlling how bosses treat everyone else. Without that control, they treat them and ALL of us very badly. That is the entire point.

The most draconian lockdown measures were all in blue states, and the most aggressive censorship of the last 20 years has come from the left. With that said, Australia, Canada and western Europe have been much, much worse than the United States on both fronts. Americans of all political sides value some sort of freedom above basically everything else. We care about it even more than we do safety and prosperity. Europeans simply don't believe in "give me liberty of give me death!". To them, freedom is just one of several variables to consider with regards to policy, and if they have to take a little (or in this case....a lot) away from people for the sake of expediency, they will usually role over quickly.

Quote:Bosses cannot be trusted to do the right things, and that includes Zuckerberg and the rest of the Silicon Valley bosses. Democrats are willing to control them; Republicans want them to "be free to live their lives", which means free to exploit other people and the environment however they want at the expense of the rest of us. And to deceive us with false "freedom" slogans and appeals to fear and prejudice.

imo, most of their promises have been rather empty in this regard, kind of like post-Reagan Republicans promising to "balance the budget". People today of all political persuasions deserve the cynicism they feel over politics.

[JasonBlack]

The 3rd Turning tends to get shit on by those interested in Strauss and Howe Theory, because such the theory appeals to intellectuals who value collectivistic societal vision in which they can play a more prominent role. In truth, 3rd Turnings are the most "you get out what you put in" of all the turnings. Provided you didn't have severe health problems or dangerous living conditions, it was a great time for people to pursue personal goals, focus on individual success, exercise an internal locus of control and experience more freedom than in most periods of history.

Those who were not interested in personal development focused more on the histrionic side of the 3T, obsessing over celebrity circuses, constantly comparing themselves to their friends, living the fake yuppie lifestyle. The more I observe people, the more cynical I get about how many people self-destruct when given even the slightest bit of freedom.

[pbrower2a]

(07-19-2022, 01:56 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(07-19-2022, 12:26 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: A lot of these are headquartered here in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, which has been a center for progressive, liberal and counter-cultural trends for decades. People who work here are not exempt from the trends. If not here, then also a few up in another liberal bastion, Seattle.

They are headquartered in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area because...the founders of these companies were progressives too. I think there is a false dichotomy with regards to "caring about resources vs caring about people", when in practice it's more "people who care about controlling resources vs people who care about controlling people". Capitalists such as Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates can fall into the latter category, as can communists like Mao Zedong and Che Guevara, as can religious fundamentalists of all creeds.

A big divide exists between high-tech businesses that have a low ratio between material resources used or extracted and corporate profits  (as in computer chips or intellectual property) and low-tech businesses that have a high ratio of material resources used or extracted and corporate profits. The material in silicon chips is slight, but the technology is fiendishly costly to develop. Such requires huge inputs of highly-talented engineers and programmers. In contrast, low-tech businesses that have a narrower margin between material inputs and consumer prices generally require labor not so skilled. Someone like Mark Zuckerberg, whose business is the selling of data or Bill Gates, whose business is the sale of computer software, requires huge numbers of people of technological sophistication (and usually formal education) who are more likely to be "woke" than the Koch family, whose Koch Industries involves unglamorous, low-tech activities as fuel, paper, household chemicals, building materials,  and cattle ranching. The Koch billionaires have been infamously reactionary, but this may reflect that their business model fits the classic plutocrat-and-proletarian model. Their businesses are environmentally dirty, and keeping the profits that they want is best done with a command-and-control system in which (ideally for the plutocrat) is fully non-union. 

Never mind, of course, that people who are in high-tech businesses use huge amounts of low-tech stuff as paper and vehicular fuels. Never mind also that low-tech activities such as oil extraction and vehicle manufacturing rely heavily upon high technology for finding resources or making their vehicles comfortable.  Ranch hands, assembly-line workers, and oil-field roustabouts are not hired for intellectual sophistication, and the optimal workers in such activities are those who don't think much about environmental issues as having food on the table.  

It would be extremely insulting to associate the Koch brothers with fascists like Agosto Pinochet and David DuKKKe; American plutocrats know that they can't get away with that and that fascists ultimately put their nations at risk of wars that can result in the destruction or confiscation of their assets as the result of war itself or of postwar judgments. Fascism typically reduces workers to near-serfs, which might be ideal for maximal profits whose basis is mass suffering (Nazi Germany was a workers' Hell as well as a zone of genocide and Gestapo terror in a system that brought about the most destructive war in history). I associate the values of most plutocrats and executives with the John Birch Society and not with the KKK or neo-Nazis.  They want to give America a mirror-image Marxism in which the Marxist caricature of capitalism of extreme inequality that degrades the toilers into near-serfs always in fear of hunger and cold is the norm. That does not require genocide or religious persecutions; they believe in treating workers equally among themselves -- equally badly -- irrespective of ethnicity or creed.   It does imply brutal management characteristic of a slave-based plantation, which however dreadful, is much less horrible than KZ-lager such as Mauthausen. Plantation slaves at least knew that their lives were valuable, and slaves at Mauthausen knew that their masters were indifferent to their survival. This said, one sort of slavery is a slow and inhuman death of a long period of exploitation and the other is more likely a quick and gruesome death.

(Both sorts of slaves deserved emancipation, and in both cases the US Army was the most effective means to that end).   

Of course I do not want the John Birch Society or its backers -- mostly plutocrats who want super-cheap labor under harsh discipline under conditions approaching serfdom setting the policies of labor-management relations. Is the Birch Society fascist? No. It does not support military expansionism (Mussolini) or even shtick (Pinochet). If you think I have an undue concern about Birchers -- they are strongly authoritarian and nuts, but they haven't changed since the 1960's and the mainstream of the Republican Party held them in contempt. Today the mainstream of the GOP has become practically identically identical with the Birch Society.   

Quote:A lot of rich progressives are very money motivated. Not as a means of elevating their lifestyle, but because they have a savior complex, want to paint themselves as the good guy and believe these traits give them the right to tell other people how to live their lives.

Practically everyone is money-motivated. It's just that the rewards are far lower for the maid than for her rich employer. 

It's more a matter of attracting the high-level talent of creativity and scientific mastery that requires that they not emulate Gilded-Era plutocrats. Contrast many other employers: one needs workers who know enough to read and right, understand instructions, obey orders, kiss up to customers, and rely only upon their meager paychecks (and perhaps some welfare assistance) instead of filching cash from the till or merchandise from the supply room for bare sustenance. People like that, even if nearly destitute, are likely to believe the employer's position that  nothing matters other than the power, indulgence, and gain of the economic elites, and that everybody is expendable for such. Then again, the ideal level of sophistication for a totalitarian regime is bare literacy that makes one competent at a menial job and undemanding in personal life while unable to criticize the political leadership. Microsoft needs a person far different from what dollar stores need, and the sorts of people that Microsoft needs would fare badly in a  dollar store.   

Quote:Tying all this back to my main point, many corporate officials are a lot more like politicians than businessmen, so it's not surprising that just as many (if not more) are Democrat than Republican, because political animals are at their best when power is most centralized.

On the whole they are decidedly reactionary in political and economic beliefs, and they would be perfectly happy if workers believed that they had no purpose in life except to earn Pie In the Sky When They Die as a reward for submissive suffering on behalf of rapacious elites who underpay them, fleece them in retail places, and overcharge them for rent in the slums in which they dwell. Know well that the MBA school that is practically necessary for entry into corporate management teaches a model for getting maximal toil for minimal pay. There may be exceptions in which some highly-visible company treats its workers well out of necessity, but in most cases it has been a race to the bottom in pay, working conditions, and repression. On the whole, Big Business supports freedom from high taxes, government regulation (except to enforce debts and prevent businesses from stealing from each other), environmental controls, and above all labor unions. Most of Corporate America is little more moral than slave-owning planters of the Old South and cavil at Nazi-style fascism only because they don't want their precious assets destroyed in bombing raids, let alone thermonuclear war -- or seized after the war by either domestic revolutionaries who seek to overthrow recent oppressors or exploiters or foreign conquerors who use the pretext of owners and executives being war criminals.     

It is great woe to the People that the economic elites who can get whatever they want from pliant or incompetent government differ from Marxists only in their praise of the vices of capitalism at its worst as great virtues in contrast to Marxist condemnation of such vices.

[Eric the Green]

(07-19-2022, 04:25 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(07-19-2022, 03:45 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: You are missing the point. It is the bosses who support Republicans. Employees support Democrats.

I am not missing the point. Your point is simply incorrect. Mark Zuckerberg is a Democrat. So is Jack Dempsey, so is Jeff Bezos, so is Warren Buffet, so is Mark Cuban. Even Donald Trump and Elon Musk were Democrats until recently.

It doesn't matter if Zuckerberg is a Democrat or not. Manchin calls himself a Democrat too, although he is bought-and-paid-for. What matters is that real Democrats are willing to restrain the corporate raiders, and that Republicans boost them and enable them.

Quote:

Quote:Democrats and especially progressive ones care about people and the resources they need. Republicans care only about money.

over-simplification if there ever was one

But quite a correct one.

These days we have an unpopular two-party monolith, one a center-left party willing to enact a balanced mixed-economy system, but whose only ability seems to be to obstruct some kinds of extremism sometimes, and an extreme-right party dedicated to greed, prejudice and the destruction of what's left of our democracy entirely, and which mostly just obstructs everything. And a public too cynical to take notice and act.

Quote:

Quote:Politicians within both parties are "political animals" because that's their profession. That is neither good nor bad. It is the decisions they make that are.

We're gonna have to disagree on that. Being a party animal makes someone inherently un-trustworthy.

I thought you were discussing "political animals?"

Gee, I'm surprised you disagree with my points in this rather-impolite rant of mine

Quote:

Quote:[quote]Progressives are not about telling other people how to live their "lives". "Life" is not making money. The "controlling people" that Democrats do is controlling how bosses treat everyone else. Without that control, they treat them and ALL of us very badly. That is the entire point.

The most draconian lockdown measures were all in blue states, and the most aggressive censorship of the last 20 years has come from the left. With that said, Australia, Canada and western Europe have been much, much worse than the United States on both fronts. Americans of all political sides value some sort of freedom above basically everything else. We care about it even more than we do safety and prosperity. Europeans simply don't believe in "give me liberty of give me death!". To them, freedom is just one of several variables to consider with regards to policy, and if they have to take a little (or in this case....a lot) away from people for the sake of expediency, they will usually role over quickly.

A government taking temporary health measures to protect the people is not "draconian". What is amazing is that in our still-3T neoliberal society a mostly-Republican crowd can be mobilized to resist what in earlier turnings would have been accepted without protest. It just shows how low neoliberal free-market crap has taken us. Really pathetic and disgusting!

And some statues being taken down and names changed hardly tampers with individual choices in life and freedoms either.

Our society is willing even-more than Europe to roll over and accept an autocratic, entertaining demagogue attaining presidential power and a Party dedicated to taking down our entire democracy and republic. We are no longer MORE dedicated to "freedom" than the Europeans are, but LESS. They are willing and able to not elect a LePen and to take down a Johnson than we are able to take down a Trump and a Bannon.

Quote:

Quote:Bosses cannot be trusted to do the right things, and that includes Zuckerberg and the rest of the Silicon Valley bosses. Democrats are willing to control them; Republicans want them to "be free to live their lives", which means free to exploit other people and the environment however they want at the expense of the rest of us. And to deceive us with false "freedom" slogans and appeals to fear and prejudice.

imo, most of their promises have been rather empty in this regard, kind of like post-Reagan Republicans promising to "balance the budget". People today of all political persuasions deserve the cynicism they feel over politics.

If you are saying here that the people deserve their own cynicism, on that we agree. The only reason for the cynicism people feel today is their own cynicism. They fail to follow what's going on, which just enables the Republican enablers of capitalist corporate destruction to ruin our society and its politics even further-- and extremists on the Left too who knock everything short of perfection and won't support Democrats either. The fact is that because of this cynicism Democrats have not even been in power for 41 years and have not been able to fulfill their promises. We are in a death spiral. Getting out of it depends on people of all generations waking up and fighting against this neoliberal disaster.

I do endorse the Burke quote.

[David Horn]

(07-20-2022, 01:48 AM)asonBlack Wrote: The 3rd Turning tends to get shit on by those interested in Strauss and Howe Theory, because such the theory appeals to intellectuals who value collectivistic societal vision in which they can play a more prominent role. In truth, 3rd Turnings are the most "you get out what you put in" of all the turnings. Provided you didn't have severe health problems or dangerous living conditions, it was a great time for people to pursue personal goals, focus on individual success, exercise an internal locus of control and experience more freedom than in most periods of history.

Those who were not interested in personal development focused more on the histrionic side of the 3T, obsessing over celebrity circuses, constantly comparing themselves to their friends, living the fake yuppie lifestyle. The more I observe people, the more cynical I get about how many people self-destruct when given even the slightest bit of freedom.

The last 3T was, as 3Ts always are, a party built on the resources created in the previous turnings.  Basically, the social and monetary capital of the world was cashed-out, and we got movies, music and tech-toys in return.  On the other hand, the fundamental basis of prosperity was eroded, and is the source of the problems we have today: aging ad decrepit infrastructure, too few places to live, too few really good jobs and no apparent way to restore them without some serious suffering.  I would say that the turnign got the dissing it deserved.

[JasonBlack]

Quote:A government taking temporary health measures to protect the people is not "draconian". What is amazing is that in our still-3T neoliberal society a mostly-Republican crowd can be mobilized to resist what in earlier turnings would have been accepted without protest. It just shows how low neoliberal free-market crap has taken us. Really pathetic and disgusting!

Forcing businesses to close down while allowing big corporations to stay open is extremely draconian, and, as you correctly claimed, neo-liberal cronyism at it's most pathetic and disgusting.

Quote:And some statues being taken down and names changed hardly tampers with individual choices in life and freedoms either.

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
~Noam Chomsky (I may not agree with him politically, but that 10% of the time he is right, he is really on the money)

We shouldn't ignore soft authoritarianism until it morphs into harder forms (although if you want examples of that, see previous conversation on doxxing)

Quote:Our society is willing even-more than Europe to roll over and accept an autocratic, entertaining demagogue attaining presidential power and a Party dedicated to taking down our entire democracy and republic. We are no longer MORE dedicated to "freedom" than the Europeans are, but LESS. They are willing and able to not elect a LePen and to take down a Johnson than we are able to take down a Trump and a Bannon.

Tell me more about this supposed autocrat who wants everyone (including his dissenters) to own guns and did nothing to censor free speech. Trump wasn't an autocrat, he was just an asshole. There is a difference.

Quote:Gee, I'm surprised you disagree with my points in this rather-impolite rant of mine

if that qualified as an "impolite rant", my ass probably sounds like a drunk redneck on Jerry Springer. This is America. Angry political rants is what we do

[pbrower2a]

(07-20-2022, 08:45 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

Quote:A government taking temporary health measures to protect the people is not "draconian". What is amazing is that in our still-3T neoliberal society a mostly-Republican crowd can be mobilized to resist what in earlier turnings would have been accepted without protest. It just shows how low neoliberal free-market crap has taken us. Really pathetic and disgusting!

Forcing businesses to close down while allowing big corporations to stay open is extremely draconian, and, as you correctly claimed, neo-liberal cronyism at it's most pathetic and disgusting.

Tax holidays would have been a good idea. Most businesses found ways in which to reopen. Retailers found that they could mandate masks for customers and direct people to go one way through aisles. Restaurants could go take-out only, and many (especially in fast food) were slow to give that up. Businesses jacked up prices to keep revenues high as the customer base shrank. 

Note well that the Catholic Church quickly shut down all Catholic churches to prevent masses from becoming super-spreader events. The Pope told people to attend masses vicariously (for American Catholics, that would largely mean watching EWTN on cable TV) and to continue giving financial support to their church. It worked as a model for other Christian denominations not under the thrall of snakes-in-collars who pretended that faith was an adequate defense against COVID-19. 

COVID-19 has killed over one million Americans or people in America, depending on one's interpretation. That is the equivalent of a city like Austin or San Antonio being wiped out. We united in rage, rightly so, against Osama bin Laden for 3000 deaths in one day from the 9/11 attack. On really-bad days, COVID-19 killed as many people nationwide in America. Worldwide it is likely close to the level of death that one associates with the Holocaust,

I hate that virus for the same reason that I hate Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden: it kills. Death may be a predictable end for us all, but pointless death generally gets no defense.  

Quote:

Quote:And some statues being taken down and names changed hardly tampers with individual choices in life and freedoms either.

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
~Noam Chomsky (I may not agree with him politically, but that 10% of the time he is right, he is really on the money)

We shouldn't ignore soft authoritarianism until it morphs into harder forms (although if you want examples of that, see previous conversation on doxxing)

Confederate politicians and generals, people who sacrificed large numbers of cannon fodder in the defense of slavery. Those are not heroes. We have plenty of military heroes from John Pershing to Norman Schwartzkopf to replace them, as well as genuine heroes who stood for the denied liberties of southern blacks. 
 

Quote:

Quote:Our society is willing even-more than Europe to roll over and accept an autocratic, entertaining demagogue attaining presidential power and a Party dedicated to taking down our entire democracy and republic. We are no longer MORE dedicated to "freedom" than the Europeans are, but LESS. They are willing and able to not elect a LePen and to take down a Johnson than we are able to take down a Trump and a Bannon.

Tell me more about this supposed autocrat who wants everyone (including his dissenters) to own guns and did nothing to censor free speech. Trump wasn't an autocrat, he was just an asshole. There is a difference.

Nazi Germany was awash in privately-owned firearms. Every Nazi in good standing was expected to own them. Thatcher's Britain had rigorous gun laws. One was a free country and the other wasn't.  "Gun rights" do not create freedom. Give more credit to free markets as opposed to crony capitalism or Marxist economics for creating the prosperity necessary for freedom, free and competitive elections (the only thing dirty about 2020 was COVID-19), the protection of minority rights, an honest judiciary, and to free speech to dissenters. If you think that weak and ineffective government that can't keep people from owning firearms gives freedom, then just look at how Freedom House has rated Somalia, with no effective government, on civil liberties and human rights -- very poor. 

Government must protect human rights and civil liberties with adequate force. 

The line between abrasive @$$hole and despot is what one can get away with. Trump did plenty to mock the normal decencies of American political life before January 6, 2021; then he tried to negate a free, fair, and competitive election that he lost. That's how dictatorships often start or are continued.    

I have threatened to commit suicide, so I should not own a firearm that can be so used. I have a better idea for defense: a dog. Burglars, muggers, and rapists dread animals that however docile they are most of the time can attack with the usual methods of a man-eater. Even small dogs can cause crippling injuries. Dogs can read us well, and they can usually figure out sociopaths like burglars, muggers, and rapists. Nothing is worth the bad bite of even a Yorkshire terrier. "Ankle biter"? Torn ligaments can lay one up a long time. A hint: the Nazis did not allow Jews to keep dogs which might figure out a Nazi sociopath for what he was and tear into him.